| I came to this art thing pretty late in life. Even though I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil, somehow I ended up in corporate America for 15 years bouncing from cubicle job to cubicle job. I was fast tracked into the typical American life: job, marriage, kids and a picket fence. Pretty boring. Luckily, a series of unfortunate events and excellent people gave me the courage to ditch the pantyhose, cubicles and picket fence before I got too sucked in, and lost forever. |  |
Smart-Ass-Escapist Art – Martha Rich
I came to this art thing pretty late in life. Even though I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil, somehow I ended up in corporate America for 15 years bouncing from cubicle job to cubicle job. I was fast tracked into the typical American life: job, marriage, kids and a picket fence. Pretty boring. Luckily, a series of unfortunate events and excellent people gave me the courage to ditch the pantyhose, cubicles and picket fence before I got too sucked in, and lost forever.
Because your vision gets warped when you are climbing up the corporate ladder, I have a pretty smart-alecky, but grateful attitude towards art. It is amazing to me that I get to do what I do. I am thankful for this. Compared to the insanity that is going on all over this fucked up world, the life we get to lead here is incredible. So, my panties get in a wad when I see how people take all this for granted and how they take themselves too seriously or get caught up in fame and status and greediness. Maybe that is because I am not famous or fancy myself, but wish I was. Hmm, too much psychology. Anyway, I just get irritated easily, but at least I admit it.
So, I guess I would call my art “smart-ass-escapist art.” I am an insecure smart ass and I like humor and pointing out the pointlessness of taking it all too seriously. It isn’t much deeper than that. The world makes you want to cry sometimes, so I have to paint something funny and ridiculous in order to deal.
I wish I had a more glamorous art story to tell, like, “I was a skateboarding street urchin orphan from the wrong side of the tracks who did beautiful graffiti art while trying to kick my drug habit.” Tortured artists are more interesting.
I get my best ideas from television, advertising, my insecurities and the general crap that surrounds me. The painting called World Peace came about when I was watching one of those shows on E! Entertainment about beauty pageants. They showed a montage of contestants all saying that world peace is what they wanted. It just struck me as bizarre, you know? I like to paint things that are a little off. I don’t like perfection or typically beautiful things. I do hope that people like my art but, if they don’t, there isn’t much I can do about it either.
